Journal of Applied Anthropology

Guidelines for Authors

Scope and the way we work

Omertaa seeks to publish reports, essays, articles, graphic novels and other types of pieces that are relevant to a broad audience interested in ethnographic methods. We aim to gather pieces that contribute to readers in an educational sense, meaning readers can learn something from it about the trade of conducting ethnographic research.

Given this broad scope, we expect pieces to be explicitly ‘situated’, meaning that each piece should provide clarity about how it came into existence and why it is deemed relevant. This positioning can either be given in the piece itself, or by an editorial introduction by an author or author’s mentor.

Omertaa is committed to accepting contributions for review in any language accommodated by our network of reviewers. We encourage collaborative work and welcome pieces from both a broad variety of authors;

Omertaa does NOT:

claim exclusivity or copyright on your work.

carry liability for copy-right infringement of others, plagiarism, or harm caused to third parties following publication of your work.

charge authors for submission, nor does it charge any publication fees.

How to submit?

Individual contributions

Authors can submit their individual piece in doc, .docx, .pages or .odt format to sam.janssen@xpeditions.be and mirjam.bussels@xpeditions.be (autolink). A personal message to the editors stating the purpose and background of your contribution is greatly appreciated. After initial assessment by the editors, you will be notified whether your piece is publishable and goes into peer review, or whether it falls outside our scope or review capability/capacity.

We are friendly to all fonts, sizes, reference styles, ways of spelling et cetera, as long as your use of any of these are readable and consistent, with enough effort spent on correct spelling and grammar.

Pictures (and tables or other visuals) can be placed in the document, but must also be send as separate attachments in .jpeg format with a minimum size of 1 Mb and a maximum size of 3Mb. Generally, footnotes are preferred above endnotes, although this can be discussed. Please keep your initial submission as sober as possible in layout and structure.

We welcome alternative ways of publishing (graphic, sound, visual...). Please contact us first to discuss formats and see what is possible.

Student work can be published as independent work when self-situating and of good quality. Students and beginning authors are asked to rely on external mentors during the creation process where possible. Students from the Expeditions’ Malta schools get mentorship from our team, often in collaboration with a mentor from their own university. Students’ work can also be published as a mentored piece, which then will include the voice of their mentor/professor who writes an introduction for the piece.

Supervised coursework

Omertaa publishes social science students’ supervised coursework as a ‘Selection’. This means we will publish ‘bundles’ of students’ work, with an introductory piece of the guiding professor/teacher/mentor/peer in which:

the context in which the research was carried out is clarified, under the motto that “no research (paper) falls from the sky”. Authors writing an editorial are encouraged to elaborate on multiple aspects of this context (personal, educational, ethical, logistical, …). For instance, it might be relevant to understand the task students were given, the weather that greatly influenced a field trip, the experimental set-up of an exercise, …

how reading this work may help other social scientists interested in qualitative methods in social research.

the flaws and strengths of the work; in general and per contribution.

coherence of the contributions. Coherence between contributions in the same selection can be based on any convincing argument, for instance content (also making it possible to bundle students’ work produced over a longer period of time), method (graphic anthropology, mapping games,…), time-period or activity (summerschool, exercise, course, …)

Proposed ‘Selections’ can be submitted for review to the Omertaa editors, mentioning ‘Coursework Selection’. The number of contributions per Coursework selection normally lies between 4-10 pieces, but exceptions can be made on request.